Sheila Muxlow has concerns about Nestle withdrawing millions of litres of water without payment.Photo by
Wayne Leidenfrost

This story originally ran in The Province on Aug. 14, 2013.

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The price of a litre of bottled water in B.C. is often higher than a litre of gasoline. However, the price paid by the world's largest bottled water company for taking 265 million litres of fresh water every year from a well in the Fraser Valley - not a cent.

Because of B.C.'s lack of groundwater regulation, Nestlé Waters Canada - a division of the multi-billion dollar Switzerland-based Nestlé Group, the world's largest food company - is not required to measure, report or pay a penny for the millions of gallons of water it draws from Hope and then sells across Western Canada.

According to the provincial Ministry of Environment, "B.C. is the only jurisdiction in Canada that doesn't regulate groundwater use."

"The province does not license groundwater, charge a rental for groundwater withdrawals or track how much bottled water companies are taking from wells," a ministry spokesman said in an email to The Province.

This isn't new. Critics have been calling for change for years, saying the lack of groundwater regulation is just one outdated example from the century-old Water Act.

The Ministry of Environment has said it plans - in the 2014 legislature sitting - to introduce groundwater regulation with the proposed Water Sustainability Act, which would update and replace the existing Water Act, established in 1909. But experts note that while successive governments have been talking about modernizing water regulations for decades, the issue keeps falling off the agenda. This time, many hope it will be different.

"It's really the Wild West out here in terms of groundwater," said Linda Nowlan, conservation director from World Wildlife Fund Canada.

"And it's been going on for over 20 years, that the Ministry of Environment, the provincial government has been saying that they're going to make these changes, and it just hasn't gone through yet."

In the District of Hope, Nestlé's well draws from an aquifer relied upon by about 6,000 nearby residents, and some of them are concerned.

"We have water that's so clean and so pure, it's amazing. And then they take it and sell it back to us in plastic bottles," said Hope resident Sharlene Harrison-Hinds.

Sheila Muxlow lives in Chilliwack, down the Fraser River from Hope. As campaign director for the Water-Wealth Project, she often hears from Hope residents who worry about the lack of government oversight on Nestlé's operations there.

"It's unsettling," Muxlow said.

"What's going to happen in the long term, if Nestlé keeps taking and taking and taking?" While Nestlé is the largest bottled water seller in B.C., others, including Whistler Water and Mountain Spring Water, also draw groundwater from B.C. When asked by The Province, those companies declined to release the volume of their withdrawals.

Though Nestlé is not required to measure and report its water withdrawals to the government, the company voluntarily reports to the District of Hope, said a Nestlé Waters Canada executive, reached in Guelph, Ont. last week.

"What we do in Hope exceeds what is proposed by the province of British Columbia," said John Challinor, Nestlé Waters Canada's director of corporate affairs.

Challinor said Nestlé keeps records of water quality and the company's mapping of the underground water resources in the area exceeds what government scientists have done.

"We do these annual reports ... We're doing it voluntarily with (the local government). If we are asked to provide it as a condition of a new permit, that's easy to do, because we're already doing it," Challinor said.

But the fact Nestlé's reports are internal and voluntary is the very issue of concern, said Ben Parfitt, a resource policy analyst with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

If it's voluntary, Parfitt said, "there's nothing to stop a company or major water user from choosing not to report. That is absolutely critical. You can't run a system like this on a voluntary basis."

Since groundwater remains unregulated in B.C., Nestlé does not require a permit for the water it withdraws.

"No permit, no reporting, no tracking, no nothing," said David Slade, co-owner of Drillwell Enterprises, a Vancouver Island well-drilling company. "So you could drill a well on your property, and drill it right next to your neighbour's well, and you could pump that well at 100 gallons a minute, 24 hours a day, seven days a week and waste all the water, pour it on the ground if you wanted to ... As far as depleting the resource, or abusing the resource, there is no regulation. So it is the Wild, Wild West." Nestlé is far from the only large company withdrawing B.C.'s groundwater for free, and Challinor said Nestlé is "largely supportive of what the government is trying to do" with modernizing the Water Act. He said he plans to sit down with B.C.'s new environment minister, Mary Polak, in the fall to discuss these issues. As for the government charging for groundwater, Challinor said: "We have no problem with paying for water, as long as the price is based on the actual cost of regulating the program."

If you walk into Cooper's Foods in downtown Hope - less than five kilometres from Nestlé's bottling plant - and buy a 1.5 litre bottle of Nestlé Pure Life water, it will set you back $1.19. That's $1.19 more than Nestlé paid the government last year for withdrawing 265 million litres of fresh water from Hope's well.

Nestlé's other water bottling plant in Canada is in Wellington County, Ont., where the province requires them to buy a licence and pay for the water they extract. Some critics, including Parfitt, feel Ontario's charge of $3.71 per million litres is still too paltry. But still, they say, it's more fair than B.C. charging nothing.

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